Currently, the issue of inequality is one of the most pressing concerns in education and educational research. Factor such as increased socio-economic inequality, movement of people across national boundaries, and refugees, creates major challenges for local communities and schools. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that teaching and leadership are informed by the best available knowledge to meet these challenges. This article, which is based on research on successful school leadership and school reforms, aims to explore what type of knowledge is used and given priority, when politicians and administrators make decisions about improving education. The article also discusses what we need to know to address equity-relevant progress and improvement. In the analysis the role the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has in setting the agenda in educational research is problematized and methodological shortcomings within research traditions focusing on successful school leadership are mentioned. A main argument is that our thinking about educational leadership must be complemented and informed by research which focuses on recent changes in the political economy which have challenged public education severely. To lead education beyond the agenda of what works we need different approaches to research, including critical studies addressing the power structures.

This paper provides a basis for a tentative framework for guiding future research into principals' identity construction and development. It is situated in the context of persisting emphases placed by government policies on the need for technocratic competencies in principals as a means of demonstrating success defined largely as compliance with demands for the improvement in student test scores. Often this emphasis is at the expense of forwarding a broader view of the need, alongside these, for clear educational values, beliefs and practices that are associated with these. The framework is informed by the theoretical work of Wenger and Bourdieu as well as recent empirical research on the part played by professional identity and emotions in school leadership. In the paper we highlight different lines of inquiry and the issues they raise for researchers. We argue that the constructions of school leadership identities are located in time, space and place, and emotions reflect complex leadership identities situated within social hierarchies which are part of wider structures and social relations of power and control.

Discretion is described as a hallmark of professional work. Professional discretion rests on trust in the ability of certain occupational groups to make sound decisions ‘on behalf’ of societal authorities. It has been suggested that in Europe, managerialist-influenced policies with increased focus on control and accountability have placed pressure on professional discretion. Although earlier studies have demonstrated tensions between external and internal accountability, they have not highlighted how legal forms of authority are key aspects in the regulation of education, or how professionals handle legal standards in their practices. The purpose of this study is to understand the interplay between legal standards and professional discretion. An organisational routines perspective is used to examine this interplay. Empirically, the students’ legal rights to a good psychosocial environment are used as a case. Based on interviews with principals, deputies and teachers in Norwegian schools, the paper examines how legal norms are translated into social practices, and how practitioners construct and legitimise their work. The study shows how preventive and remedial measures are prevalent in Norwegian schools. When laws and regulations require specific procedures, they are transformed into routines based on the schools’ iterative practices. The study adds an empirical analysis to current understandings of juridification in education.

This article examines the spread of new public management (NPM) across European education systems as it has traversed national boundaries. While recognising the transnational dimensions of the spread of NPM, the authors offer new insights into the importance of national contexts in mediating this development in educational settings by focusing upon NPM within three European countries (England, Italy and Norway). We reveal its recontextualisation in these sites and the interplay between NPM, and local and national conditions. This analysis is underpinned by a theoretical framework that seeks to capture the relationship between education and the state and to reveal tensions produced by NPM both as a shaping force and an entity shaped by local conditions in these contexts. The article concludes by focusing upon the complexities and specificities of NPM recontextualisation in the three countries as a basis for a reflection upon possible future policy trajectories.

This chapter aims to explore how successful leadership for diversity is defined, negotiated, and addressed in selected policy documents and culturally diverse schools in Norway, the USA, and Cyprus. The reanalysis of leadership practice is based on data from the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP) case studies. We will discuss how leadership for diversity is enacted in the ISSPP schools and explore how principals negotiate the balance between honouring student cultures and emphasizing student learning and achievement. These practices are analyzed through the theoretical frameworks of culturally responsive leadership (Ladson-Billings 1995; Johnson 2006; 2007) and leadership for democratic education (Møller 2006; Vedøy and Møller 2007). We argue that establishing a dichotomy between an emphasis on social justice and academics is inappropriate, but a narrow conception of student achievement may privilege certain social and cultural groups and marginalize others. Therefore, self-reflexivity is demanded, and in particular in terms of foregrounding notions of power. Finding a balance between honouring student home cultures and emphasizing student learning outcomes does not easily lend itself to quick fixes.

In this article I examine approaches to school leadership in Scandinavia by applying a historical lens. I start by drawing attention to some aspects of the ideology and the history of the Scandinavian education systems in order to discuss how these aspects intersect with the globalised policy trends, and where there is likely to be tensions between the global trends and the cultural and historical imperatives of schooling and school leadership in Scandinavia. The devolution of greater responsibilities to schools has contributed to a number of demands upon them, in particular on school principals, but so far, the emerging age of accountability has had only small consequences on classroom practice. My main argument is that even though there is a growing homogenisation of approaches to school leadership due to global forces, local traditions ensure that they are played out differently in national contexts.

This article aims at providing insight into ways of constructing leadership for learning within a Norwegian context. The paper offers a methodology of narrative inquiry inspired by critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1992), and the analysis is informed by a distributed perspective on leadership for learning (Gronn 2002, Spillane et al. 2007). The analysis draws mainly upon interview narratives of one of the Norwegian school principals who participated in the Leadership for Learning project. The focus is on how this principal talks about educational leadership and learning. The principal’s story is juxtaposed with references to how her deputies and a group of teachers frame their experiences about leadership for learning at this particular school. In this instance, the sharing of leadership is considered successful because those wishing to share in the leadership of the school have learned first to share in the leader’s vision of leading. A main argument is that in constructing her story about leadership for learning the principal is also negotiating who she is for others as well as for herself, and her identity construction is work in progress. In the analysis it is highlighted how her story is embedded in a cultural notion of the school as a hierarchical organization in which principalship is thought of as crucial and leadership is associated with role and authority. Simultaneously, her story is closely connected to the discourse of distributed leadership which dominated the talk within the Leadership for Learning project. It is suggested that further investigation of the ongoing negotiation processes at school level would to a great extent enrich the current research base in leadership for learning.

Møller, Jorunn (2009). School leadership in an age of accountability: Tensions between managerial and professional accountability. Journal of educational change.
ISSN 1389-2843.
10(2) . doi:
10.1007/s10833-008-9078-6Vis sammendrag

Standards and accountability have become a central issue of educational reform in many countries. Professional standards for teachers and principals have been developed, and benchmarking and comparison are at the heart of the new performance assessment. ‘Designer leadership’ has become a defining theme for leadership in the appearance of regimes of assessment (Gronn 2003). Although performance standards can provide comprehensive descriptions of the elements of principals’ work, and the development processes used in validating the standards are often hugely consultative, there are several important weaknesses connected to it. A main criticism is related to its decontextualized feature (Louden and Wildy 1999). In addition, standardized evaluation policies and protocols tend to create as many problems as they solve, and the discourses of accountability are often a mixture of several forms of accountability (Elmore 2003; Sinclair 1995; Sirotnik 2005). The paper aims to explore frameworks of accountability which may support student learning and highlights claims about what would allow school leaders to take risks and be imaginative in their approach to school improvement.